Authorities raid homes of sports journalists

As the jour­nal­ist said in a Face­book post, law enforce­ment offi­cers raid­ed the apart­ment, where he has not lived for a year, in the frame­work of a crim­i­nal case opened over last year’s anti-Lukašen­ka protests.

The offi­cers report­ed­ly told the neigh­bors that they want­ed to get inside the apart­ment because of an ace­tone smell, alleg­ing that drugs were being made there.

Mr. Bier­azin­s­ki said that the offi­cers had bro­ken down the apartment’s door. “They didn’t even both­er to call either the own­er of the apart­ment or peo­ple reg­is­tered there,” he not­ed.

As a result of the search, a computer’s hard dri­ve, some mem­o­ry sticks, white and red wrist­bands, a mag­net bear­ing the image of Paho­nia, Belarus’ his­tor­i­cal­ly nation­al coat of arms, and a base­ball bat fea­tur­ing the Tribuna.com logo were seized.

Accord­ing to the jour­nal­ist, anoth­er tribuna.com jour­nal­ist has also had his home searched recent­ly.

In ear­ly August, the web­site tribuna.com, its mir­ror, social media accounts and the publication’s mobile app were des­ig­nat­ed extrem­ist by a judge at the request of the inte­ri­or min­istry.

Access to the web­site tribuna.com was blocked in Belarus in 2020. The project’s founder Dzmit­ryj Navoša, a promi­nent Moscow-based jour­nal­ist who is also the founder of the web­site sports.ru, pub­licly sup­port­ed the post-elec­tion protests in the coun­try.